I’m tired of reporting on this game, because it doesn’t deserve the attention it’s getting, but as I’ve said in the past, a quick trip to the WMD Forums and you’re bound to find something stupid about Project CARS. is a fairly decent German gaming site centered around Microsoft consoles, and their review of Project CARS was very fair and honest – praising the good aspects of the game, and openly discussing the issues plauging the game without downplaying them, as was the case with PC Gamer’s review:
Three days ago, XboxFront changed their score, due to “innumerable technical bugs that affect both the singleplayer and multiplayer mode.” They also noted that “many of these mistakes were [discovered] after the fact by our readers and the XboxFront community.” The game went from being an astounding 87, to a lowly 65, and rightfully so – they simply could not ignore the huge amount of issues being reported with the game on their own message boards. As we’ve done with R3E, it was right of them to take another look.
This didn’t sit well with WMD Members at all.
Matthias Brems, author of the Project CARS review for XboxFront, defends his decision to lower the score of the game, claiming “this is the actual state of PCARS on Xbox One.” He also says that the score will be altered again in the future if patches manage to rectify the numerous problems with the crowd-funded racing sim.
The community still jumps on the guy, and even Slightly Mad Studios IT Manager Vittorio Rapa says “bugs kills this game is not what I call journalism” and “someone who has been accepted aboard for the past three years and followed the project should know what has been done here.” WMD members, and virtually anyone else involved in this game, simply cannot take Project CARS being insulted in any way, shape, or form – anyone who dares to draw attention to the game’s stunning array of glitches is dismissed as a troll, even if they’re an author for a legitimate gaming news site.
And this is what they’re defending:
And despite a strong first week of sales, Project CARS has drastically dropped down Steam’s Top Sellers chart:
You see, and yet it is still better than Assetto Corsa, rFactor and others.
LikeLike
I want some of what you’re smoking.
LikeLike
In what dimension?
LikeLike
Sure Sparky, that’s why I am still driving RF2 and GSCE. I am not going to touch PCars until some major patches come out. I am a WMD member by the way.
LikeLike
With all the bugs, missing features and even the terrible AI, you’d be hard-pressed to even put this above F1 2014 of all the things.
LikeLike
It’s Gran Turismo all over, criticise something they’ll dry-hump to death – get a “well I’m ok with this excuse from the developer” response, they just can’t come to grips that a product failed to deliver.
Whatever happened to GTR3 ?
LikeLike
Not only bugs but bloody weird ones too, Ive seen tons of diffrent bugs in 20years of PC gaming however the ones you find in Pcars are just utterly bizzare, from invisible walls, weird AI,cars flying,tyres warming stood still on grass,Ai unaffected by rain, AI getting ridiculous times when skip qualify,BS controller support,AI unaffected by offroad, rubber banding despite WMD members swearing on mothers grave there is none, on and on you could write a paper on the state of this title ,you would struggle to call this a Alpha.
Meanwhile titles like RF2, GSCE, AC and raceroom go unnoticed by the masses because they dont do the ridiculous console style marketing or have rabid WMD members screaming at punters.
LikeLike
It really is pretty interesting.
The amount of strange behavior you can note when a developer clearly doesn’t understand the interaction between components developed by separate departments is worthy of some sort of research paper.
At this point, I would classify the interaction as ‘infinite’ and not capable of being completely addressed within the ‘2 years of continued development’ from SMS. Not even 5 years. There’s just too much intrinsically disconnected code interaction, apparently no one at SMS is capable of actually unifying the critical interactions. They probably all stuck with simbin….
LikeLike
Sounds like he isnt getting his pre-release copy of PCars2 now
LikeLike
Hi, does anyone here know the deal proposed for members of pCars who bought in at the beginning? I bought the second level of membership, something like £25. I kind of thought we all got a share in any profits made according to our initial level of investment. I thought I might make a little money, 20 or 30 pounds maybe. The only reward offered is a 50% discount which I can’t even be bothered to take up having driven a few of their builds over the past coule of years and being utterly underwhelmed by them. I gave up on them a long time ago. I know I should probably ask on the WMD forums, but I’d probably be seen as trolling.
LikeLike
Yeah 50per cent off so for buying early and helping fund it its gonna cost you the exact same as everyone else who didnt, great deal eh? the FSA (Think FSA?) put a stop to the “returns” why Im not sure you will have to look up.
LikeLike
He will get returns.
LikeLike
The FSA mandated that they must honor any existing ‘backer’s’ (investors that agreed to unknown metrics of ‘success’) requests for refunds and discontinue their membership scheme immediately. That’s why the option of purchasing a WMD ‘membership’ became unavailable in the first place.
Technically…. It wasn’t really at all legal in the first place.
LikeLike
I just noticed I have a 50% discount in my inventory.
If someone wants to use it, I will purchase the game and gift it to you, including easily verifiable zero-fee escrow.
Otherwise, this coupon will never, ever be used.
LikeLike
I did not completly understand what you said. The FSA removed the option to buy a membership and obliged SMS to refund anybody that is asking for a refund, but every members will still have returns. It’s even been confirmed that we will atleast get back what we paid, because the game sold very well.
LikeLike
I didn’t completely understand, are you saying you’ll give the game to someone for free?
LikeLike
You better ask on WMD. Why the hell would you be labelled as a troll?
LikeLike
That’s how they roll.
LikeLike
* Also, the FSA is likely the only reason I got my 40 USD refund.
LikeLike
There’s no 40 USD pack (but 27USD and 54 USD), also if you have the 50% discount, you couldn’t have asked for a refund (the refunds are no more after the discounts have been sent). Also, asking for a refund would be stupid, because the returns would be higher than the amount refunded! Not sure what’s you about?
LikeLike
It’s really not difficult,
I got my refund around build 700 (and yes, iirc it was a 40 USD pack). They put a 50% off coupon in my steam inventory at some point after release. Don’t really have time or the inclination to argue with you about reality vs. your perspective or ‘information’. SMS does some half-assed shit, so I don’t really give a damn what they told you or anyone else. Maybe they thought, “Hey, I bet we can get this guy to buy the game again if we send him a coupon, he already gave us money once before.” Who knows? Only SMS knows and they aren’t too keen on more than skin-deep statements of ‘truth’.
So far, SMS really doesn’t deserve any amount of trust. Forgive me if I take third-party repetitions of their statements with an ounce of salt. What ‘returns’? Provide actual metrics for the sales, expected dividends and an approximation of their arrival, minus the truthful costs for product returns by ex-customers. I already saw their original ummm…. ‘IPO’? I immediately noticed the lack of any tangible expectations from SMS. The documents have been crafted with more care than their actual release, you’ll find it a little tricky to actually nail them down in a court of law. I only gave them money with the intention of paying for a simulator ahead of time, based on promises (and excuses) made by Ian Bell on nogrip, nothing more.
Now, as for “c172fccc” (no reply link under your comment for some reason), are you willing to cite your sources directly with actual figures in terms of sales and resultant returns to the investors? I’ve seen rough estimations from highly invested best case scenario types, now it’s time for some real numbers. SMS has said many things, yet only a very small portion of it turned out to be true.
LikeLike
Again, there’s no 40 USD pack.
And the discounts are assigned to the Steam profiles by Valve, so if you got one, probably you got it because your key wasn’t backlisted or whatever. The discounts are not distributed by WMD directly.
In general, as I said, you got less money by asking for a refund (you got 25 euros), than the money you would have with the return fees(considering the current sales, a team member fees would be the double or more of that amount), this is why I said: it’s “stupid” to ask for a refund.
LikeLike
What exactly is the relevance of the price? It was some amount of money between 1 EUR and 100 EUR, okay?
Now, I may not have explained the point of the refund to you directly, though I have before. The refund had nothing to do with money. It was an expression of discontent with SMS’s practices and the increasingly off-target development in the only language that SMS understands.
Again, provide some damned metrics about these returns. You keep making unsupported statements that are coming from entities that clearly have issues with keeping their word.
Don’t repeat yourself again with the same baseless statements. You don’t seem to understand how easily SMS could weasel out of their …’obligation’. The terms of your non-existent contract make that pretty clear.
LikeLike
meanwhile Graham bell after some questions on MP bugs called a RD moderator out by trying to shame him that he recived 4 free copys of pcars and he wasnt toeing the pcars line, utterly disgusting,VR.net despite posting a ton of empty box revies refuses to post his Pcars review omne of the better ive seen, turns out head of VR is employed by SMS, just goes on and on,
Ppl wonder why Pcars get so much hate, maybe its the fact that they have basically tried to buy or silence every critic around,
for 3odd years, f**k ya BS SMS, the “evil” EA games have more morals then that lot.
http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/project-cars-forum-moderators-banning-customers.106070/page-2
LikeLike
And I quote Ian Bell
“No, I don’t like the tone here.
Enjoy your free copies Bram but there’s no need to be so confrontational.”
LikeLike